Conditions in PHP

Course
overview

In PHP, conditional statements are a fundamental part of building effective websites that are customised with preferences or that require a login. In fact there are many uses for conditional statements in PHP.

In PHP a condition is typed as a boolean type. The simplest conditions are true and false, but more complex conditions also return these as results.

There are several operators that can be used:

Symbol	Name	Returns true when
<	Less than	`$a` is less than `$b`.
>	Greater than	`$a` is greater than `$b`.
<=	Less than or equal to	`$a` is less than or equal to `$b`.
>=	Greater than or equal to	`$a` is greater than or equal to `$b`.
==	Equal to	`$a` is equal to `$b`.
!=	Not equal to	`$a` is not equal to `$b`.
<>	Not equal	`$a` is not equal to `$b`.
===	Identical	`$a` and `$b` are the same and are the same type.
!==	Not identical	`$a` and `$b` are not the same or are not the same type.

These operators are easy to use:

PHP

<?php
	$x = 5;
	$y = 7;
	$z = 0;

	$z = $x < $y;
	echo("1:" . $z);
	$z = $x > $y;
	echo("2:" . $z);
	$z = $x <= $y;
	echo("3:" . $z);
	$z = $x >= $y;
	echo("4:" . $z);
	$z = $x == $y;
	echo("5:" . $z);
	$z = $x != $y;
	echo("6:" . $z);
?>

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Propositional logic, which programming languages such as PHP use, can also join multiple conditions through logical conjunction and logical disjunction. These are better known as AND and OR.

AND and OR are based on AND gates and OR gates in computer hardware.

AND

AND requires that two conditions are true to return true.

The following is a truth table for AND:

P	Q	P AND Q
true	true	true
true	false	false
false	true	false
false	false	false

In PHP the AND symbol is &&. The following is an example using AND in a condition:

PHP

<?php
	$p = true;
	$q = false;
	$r = true;

	$result = $p && $q;
	echo("1:" . $result);
	$result = $p && $r;
	echo("2:" . $result);
?>

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2:1

OR

OR requires that one of the two conditions is true to return true.

The following is the truth table for OR:

P	Q	P OR Q
true	true	true
true	false	true
false	true	true
false	false	false

In PHP the OR symbol is ||. The following is an example using OR in a condition:

PHP

<?php
	$p = false;
	$q = false;
	$r = true;

	$result = $p || $q;
	echo("1:" . $result);
	$result = $p || $r;
	echo("2:" . $result);
?>

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2:1

Negation

The final type of logical operator is the NOT operator. The truth table following shows how NOT performs.

P	NOT P
true	false
false	true

In PHP, NOT is represented with the ! operator. Putting a NOT operator in front of a boolean value will invert it. The following is a condition that uses the NOT operator to flip the value of a boolean value:

PHP

<?php
	$x = false;
	$y = true;
	echo("1:" . !$x);
	echo("2:" . !$y);
?>

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De Morgan's Law

A key law in logic is De Morgan's Law. This law shows:

the negation of a conjunction is the disjunction of the negations;
the negation of a disjunction is the conjunction of the negations;

Less formally:

!($A && $B) == !$A || !$B
!($A || $B) == !$A && !$B

The truth table for !($A && $B) and !$A || !$B is as follows:

$A	$B	$A && $B	!($A && $B)	!$A \|\| !$B
true	true	true	false	false
true	false	false	true	true
false	true	false	true	true
false	false	false	true	true

Now in PHP:

PHP

<?php
	$A = true;
	$B = false;
	echo(!($A && $B));
	echo(!$A || !$B);
?>

Now the truth table for !($A || $B) and !$B is as follows:

$A	$B	$A \|\| $B	!($A \|\| $B)	!$A && !$B
true	true	true	false	false
true	false	true	false	false
false	true	true	false	false
false	false	false	true	true

Now in PHP:

PHP

<?php
	$A = true;
	$B = false;
	echo(!($A || $B));
	echo(!$A && !$B);
?>

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Course
overview

Part 4.1Conditions in PHP

AND

OR

Negation

De Morgan's Law